Defining Autonomy for Wellness Robots in Senior Care
IEEE Spectrum Robotics — an examination of how socially assistive wellness robots could support the seven dimensions of senior wellness, and how a framework can measure their autonomy.What Attendees will LearnWhy the senior care crisis exceeds incremental automation. Demographic pressure, workforce shortages, and a daily wellness-programming gap all strain traditional care models.What defines a wellness robot as a category.
Click here to log in to the hub. This White Paper gives engineers, researchers, and care professionals an overview of how socially assistive wellness robots can support senior wellness, and how a framework can measure their autonomy. The senior care system faces converging pressures from an aging population, severe staffing shortages, and limited time for individual wellness programming. Existing technologies include reminder apps, fall detectors, voice assistants, and companion devices. Each of these addresses only one piece of the problem. This paper argues for a different paradigm: wellness, defined across seven interdependent dimensions, as the organizing principle for a new category of socially assistive robot. It introduces the Care Robot Autonomy Scale (CRAS), a six-level framework that measures autonomy across assessment, intervention, social intelligence, and care coordination. The paper reviews the technical capabilities such systems require, the clinical evidence gathered to date, and a phased roadmap toward higher autonomy. It closes with educational implications for care operators, researchers, regulators, and robot platform developers. IEEE Spectrum Magazine, the flagship publication of the IEEE, explores the development, applications and implications of new technologies. It anticipates trends in engineering, science, and technology, and provides a forum for understanding, discussion and leadership in these areas. Understanding VHF (Very High Frequency) Propagation Improving the Capabilities of Cognitive Radar and Electronic Warfare Systems
